Reliable Spatial Relationship Constrained Feature Point Matching of Oblique Aerial Images

Abstract

This paper proposes a reliable feature point matching method for oblique images using various spatial relationships and geometrical information for the problems resulted by the large view point changes, the image deformations, blurring, and other factors. Three spatial constraints are incorporated to filter possible outliers, including a cyclic angular ordering constraint, a local position constraint, and a neighborhood conserving constraint. Other ancillary geometric information, which includes the initial exterior orientation parameters that are obtained from the platform parameters and a rough DEM, are used to transform the oblique images geometrically and reduce the perspective deformations. Experiment results revealed that the proposed method is superior to the standard SIFT regarding both precision and correct matches using images obtained by the SWDC-5 system.